One of the most fascinating and impactful developments in the fields of empire studies and colonialism in the past decade or so has been the rise of interest in inter- and trans-imperial and -colonial histories. Far transcending an older interest in competition and conflict between empires, these histories study a wide range of relationships between empires’ governments and peoples. Filling empirical lacunas, this scholarship pushes back against and goes beyond what one may call “methodological empire-ism:” historians’ well-established (and ultimately politically rooted) tendency to study single empires.
This historiographic development is the base of our conversation, titled “Cities, Empire, and its (Dis)contents, c. 1500-2000.” Our central question is: how do inter-, trans-, post-, and comparative imperial case studies of “the global urban” fit into, question, complicate, and/or further the afore-noted historiographic development, and vice versa? Possible examples are: anti-colonial & decolonizing networks, methods & memories; inter-city competitions and hierarchies; inter-municipal relationships; compared urban “citizenship”; cities dia- or synchronically governed by multiple empires; internationally governed cities; and compared ambivalences, e.g. cities as sites of peak resistance and repression or of great imperial confidence and doubt.
We warmly welcome other submissions and themes that correspond to the conversation title, too, including case studies and conceptual texts that connect imperial cases of the “global urban” to other bourgeoning scholarly concerns. A few of many possible examples are: cities as disconnectors; colonialism and/versus settler colonialism; urban-rural relations (where “is” the city?); environmental dimensions; and, most broadly: how to (not) square “the global” and “the imperial” through the lens of cities.